Feminism and the Cinema of Experience

Lori Jo Marso is Doris Zemurray Stone Professor of Modern Literary and Historical Studies, Professor of Political Science, and Director of American Studies at Union College. She is author of Politics with Beauvoir: Freedom in the Encounter and coeditor of W Stands for Women: How the George W. Bush Presidency Shaped a New Politics of Gender, both also published by Duke University Press.

“Camerawork is motherwork: beyond any opposition between activity and passivity, care and creation, singularity and commonality. Lori Jo Marso’s new book exhorts us to join in nothing less than the feminist project of transforming the world. In the meantime, it holds us, like the films it discusses, in a space where we can bear and explore our anxiety, ambivalence, even dread. A must-read for anybody who has access to a camera.” - Domietta Torlasco, author of (The Rhythm of Images: Cinema beyond Measure) “Lori Jo Marso’s contention that film has the ability to invite viewers to feel like feminists makes a significant intervention in feminist film theory. She shows that representing the experiences or struggles of women is less important than the creation of responses in the spectator that can be understood in feminist terms. Her claim that authentic representation is not central to feminist cinema, for example, is newly necessary in an age in which ‘representation’ has become once again central to popular feminism. An exciting, original, and beautifully argued book.” - Rosalind Galt, author of (Alluring Monsters: The Pontianak and Cinemas of Decolonization)